You know you've got one. that campaign you've been wanting to run. the one with the space princess. What about that cool encounter where the party meets a space princess? or remember that character you wanted to play, the space princess?
Post ideas for a space campaign. ideas for a setting in space. encounters in space. maps you've used for your space games. SPAAAACE!
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Ill start with something. One kinda cool idea i had for my space game was this new mineral has been showing up inside asteroids across space from some other galaxy, held within are these blue crystals that emit a strong energy signature. anything they come into contact with becomes supercharged including guns, ships and people.
its a race against the clock for the players to scrounge as much of this stuff up before anyone else, along the way they meet other people after it and can fight and steal it. once they have it they can sell it for big bucks, or use it to amp themselves and get more.
still thinking on what I'm actually going to do endgame, but its just a random idea.
What about you guys?
does captcha even know how big a sign is!?!?
nobody has space ideas?
not even meeting a space drifter?
>Be spacebusinessman
>Have spacebriefcase
>Wear spacesuit
I've been working on an idea for space railway cops. Mass-beam travel is an idea I really like, basically continuous long-range particle beams that magnetic sails can hook into to ride. You'd get merchant travel along these steady, reliable space lanes. But that makes them tempting for pirate craft cutting in with conventional rocket drives to prey on the ships that can't maneuver much. So you have space cops riding the rails with both magnetic sails and rockets (not used on merchant ships because it kills your mass ratio to have two drive systems, and that's uneconomical for cargo ships), patrolling alongside the merchant ships but able to hop off the tracks to deal with pirate bases.
The blackness of space is actually a massive wall of monsters slowly closing in.
thats horrifying
You need to pay a space tax for every minute you are in space. Each mission is going to a planet and making a fortune just to afford going to the next planet.
Giant spaceship, millions on inhabitants roaming the galaxy very very slowly.
Child restrictions heavily enforced, families put on a waiting list to be allowed to have a child, priority given to those with high end jobs to breed smarter people. Those that threaten the ship or are unable to find work a year after graduating are spaced via airlocks in secret. Elderly get a "retirement" when they're unable to work.
I have a lot of ideas actually.
a) You're literally playing schoolkids from mars. Since the education system is actually good all of you go on a year of exploring a hitherto unexplored exoplanet before you graduate. Of course the planet has already largely been explored by responsible adults before they let a bunch of kids go there, but it still has that "frontier" feeling to it.
From this premise several things could happen:
-You fail to board the correct ship in time, and and up with a bunch of space pirates instead by accident.
-You board the ship, but get attacked and crashland on a planet. Either the one you were supposed to go to... or not.
-You actually reach the planet, but at this time of the year it is radically different from how the government reports claimed it would be. (á la pitch black)
-You reach the system and actually have to do what you came for. Found a settlement and learn how to be explorers.
You get most of the fun of survival/horror/exploration but with the added difficulty that you're an inexperienced, possibly scared kid, with only a very limited number of rugged veterans available to back you up.
b) Going on from Pitch Black, another idea was a game with a Force of Nature type super NPC who the players either have to ally with or hunt down, possibly both. The guy might just be a rugged veteran, or an augmented human, or an alien, or have outright superpowers. The players might be after him for a variety of reasons, have different approaches and possibly even compete with each other for the prize/the NPCs favor. Basically a BBEG who might actually be an ally, with all the possible setting options from the Riddick movies. They'd make great RPG material.
c) Sliders except in space. The players are marooned in an unknown system/galaxy, and have to find their way back to Sol. This however won't be easy without knowing any of the people and places around. Many episodes, many destinations.
That's awful and people would revolt.
d) The apocalypse happened eclipse phase style, and you are either
- a vault dweller or human consciousness ina robot who found the last remaining colony ship in the middle of nuclear winter and managed to start it up
- or one of the lucky ones who managed to escape annihilation on a colony ship,
You now have to fulfill your duty aboard that ship whatever it may be, and try to find and negotiate a place where you can settle down. And avoid being too close to the aliens that bombed your parents back into the stone-age.
e) Similarly to the previous one, you're on a starship. Except this time it's voluntary, and it's from the United Federation of Planets. The players
-all control the captain á la everyone is john
-all control some minor character on the spaceship who end up becoming friends and trying to survive together while the captain crashes the ship frontally into a romulan dreadnought or something.
-all control one of the crewmembers while not having any other crew. (essentially traveller but in the StarTrek setting)
f) The game starts out not as a sci-fi game, but as a fantasy game. The players find an ancient temple full of great terrible dangers and possibly even greater wonders, which in the end turns out to be a spaceship. As the ghosts of the past explain it turns out that the setting was EclipsePhase or Traveller all along, and the people on the planet either
-got their memories wiped a thousand years ago by some great enemy
-or the enemy was so terrible that the people wiped their own minds to avoid having to confront it in space ever again
-or some nanotech simply malfunctioned and the whole thing was an accident.
Either way, new sheets for the same characters and let the space exploration/survival/hunt begin.
g) Not actually a space based setting, the players are all stuck on the inner surface of a dyson sphere/ring. Either by accident or to conquer it or to discover secrets. Imagine if the Halo series never left the ring.
I meant specifically the last part of the spoiler. There's no way anyone would actually take part in that. Also, spacing raw materials isn't very resource friendly.
The first part is neat though!
Just wanted that to be said.
>Space briefcase contains FTL communicator
>Travel to other worlds and attempt to sell them goods from other worlds he's visited
>Singlehandedly establish interstellar trade Empire
>If another spacebizman tried to encroach, initiate a massive conspiracy to manipulate your customers to get him shuned or killed.
I had similar stuff going but more leaning into hard-sci fi, shit was good, its a kind of basic ' gold rush' premise but if you spin it right it can get you a long campaigning out of that.
captcha got mental yesterday, signs covering all boxes, shop signs, road signs, house numbers, billboards. Invasive as fuck.
we trained AI to recognize shit to shoot now we train it to know where it is
I'd love to run a game in Orion's Arm using GURPS, but fuck if it isn't a difficult setting to work out how to use.
always wanted to run a strossian sci-fi game.
All the players are robots. Mankind is extinct.
the players were the last batch of sexbots off the production line. what do you do, when your entire design purpose was to appeal to a species that's died out?
Muh nigga.
Shit i was thinking im the only one that actually knows that setting.
Its one of this fucking niche sites that are to niche even for some Veeky Forums neckbeards.
Honestly i was thinking the same thing but not only GURPS being you know GURPS, the setting itself is just to fucking hard of a nut to crack.
I mean for me for example, you can well spin something of an human intelligence in Eclipse Phase but in Orions Arm, T1, unmodded baselines are literary a curiosity and if they are somewhere in large numbers its some insignificant shithole.
It makes the whole setting really unappealing for longer campaigns.
Its fun to play a one shot as some sort of AI, but i can't make longer, stretched campanings if they are not humanocentric and from human perspective.
yeah... space (((businessman))).
Well you could call them Merchant Police force, and actually grew out of what was originally the merchant navy on earth.
I ran a hard-Sf game which is openly a mash-up of the most ineteresting parts of each and every one of my favorites SF universes. Mostly Revelation Space, plus the Manifold Trilogy, the Xeelee Sequence, Firefall... It came from a discussion with my group that hard-SF movies and books, and by extension pen and paper games, are not entertaining.
They've played it for more than three years.
Starting with the ragtag crew of a poorly maintained lighthugger, it ended with each player transfering their consciousness to a fleet of nanotech-powered multi-kilometers long spaceships, turning entire solar systems into resources or deciding the outcome of a 10.000 years long, solar system wide engagement over a few dice throws. It turned more grand strategy than roleplay at the very end which grew old rather quickly on us, so we took the desision to stop on a open, somewhat optimistic ending. Players were happy with the development so they didn't hold the gameplay-borefest it became at the end against me.
>fleet of nanotech-powered multi-kilometers long spaceships
How do you even play something like this.
Players play humans that are forced to leave earth when a planet-killer cataclysm occurs.
All of humanities ships, no matter what their purpose or who owned them are immediately pressed into service as arks to save as many people as possible. However there are so few of these ships that many humans simply do not make it on and humanities number is reduced to a mere 2 billion.
When playing, you randomly generate what ship you are on. Weather it is an ex Navy ship, scientific research ship, cargo ship or even one previously owned by a paramilitary corporation or private interest. You then choose your career from a set of near-future skills:
A.) Ship officers (who are desperately trying to maintain the hierarchy after so many of the new refugees are vying for power. However they get their own quarters and are the first to receive rations. With useful skills such as navigation and engineering they are vital to the running of the ship and are near irreplaceable.)
B.) Scientist of a discipline (these indeviduals are looked upon to be saviours of the people and keepers of rare and highly valuable skills. They are relied upon to be both teachers and refugees. They may be doctors, physicists, bionic doctors or even the relatively new field of nanotechnologists.)
C.) Earth Navy trooper (these individuals are trained in weapons systems and survival, and are extremely useful when exploring for possible resources on unknown planetoids. They have a somewhat old fashion set of ideals and morals from old earth such as loyalty to ones friends, country and the hierarchy of officers.)
continued.
But within a few generations, the high rich people's children would be the only ones left to work in waste disposal, and then people might actually care.
Exquisitely.
Robots are advanced enough to have a human like mind and body, but are treated as second class citizen, therefore they are the best merchant partners for dictators and freedomfighters. Because there is no diplomatic treatys between functional states and robit driven space stations.
Old but massive AI has been trudging along for thousands of years. It's been keeping everything spotless and well-oiled all this time, waiting, because it knew in its mechanical heart that the humans would return.
The players meet the AI, but it turns out it's outdated and incompatible with everything. The players must find a use for it.
Continued from:
D.) Ex Enforcer (these people are either ex detectives, police or space customs officers, usually skilled in martial art and pistol weapons, these individuals are relied upon by the captain of the ship to enforce some kind of structure and meter out justice and to stop the ship descending into anarchy. In the case of any court the ship captain is treated as judge, but due to constraints on time the enforcer has defacto control over what is legal.)
E.) Wealthy (Scions of dynasties, entrepreneur or share holders in corporations, Theses people bought their position on the ship and when the cataclysm occurred they lost more than everyone else. Despite this, they still retain many of the skills and resources of their affluent past. They get their own quarters and a few scattered valuables as well as the ability to manipulate and deceive others. Killers in the boardroom, many also have the ear of the captain. Their utmost concern is the economic welfare of the ship. They start with a butler or domestic robot or one contact from another career on the ship.)
F.) Super star or entertainer. These people carry the soul of old earth with them be they comedians, musicians, actors or other, and effectivly control the morale of all refugees on the ship making them quite powerful. They have the abilitiy to charm and convince others to see things their way. This has led to many a movement or poltical ambition and they are often closely watched by the captain and his enforcers.
About to start a campaign soon with one of my space ideas, essentially ancient gods created a pocket universe before our current one collapsed. filling it with tiny planetoids no larger than 30 to 40 kilos in diameter. its a space fantasy/western setting with dozens of races and places to explore. Sound interesting enough?
With very improvised and sub-optimal strategic rules (about how fast you can process a system's resources into military hardware and how much of a head start you have on your opponent to obtain local superiority and ruin their ships before they can do the same to you, in a very hard-SF strategically predictable way but with way too little room for tactical talent to be even slightly enjoyable) which is for no small part why we stopped at that point once we hurt the Inhibitors so bad their non-consciousness decided cooperation for long-term survival against extra-galactic threats was the superior outcome. Ence the vaguely optimistic open ending. The rules were far from good really, i guess the players tolerated it just because they had much more fun before and liked the story enough to see and make a good ending for it. We wrapped all of it in the very last months. Compare this to our 3+ years of playing cyber space pirates, boarding derelict ships, shooting laz0rs that could cause nuclear winters if aimed at a planet, playing corporate thieves over two centuries and three solar systems, exploring Blindisght's Rorshach and getting some serious amount of brainfuck (I told you, i have not once ounce of creativity, but I did mash all those influences quite nicely). On the plus side the lack of roleplay at that point kinda represented quite properly how detached from baseline humans civilization (or what can still be considered baseline at that point) they became so i'm not entirely unhappy with how it turned out, even if I painted myself into a corner.
I made of four people, who didn't know SF beyond Star Wars and Star Trek, fine connoisseurs of the most avant-gardiste hard-SF ideas out there and acceptable astromers so it was not a complete loss.
G.) Criminal. Food and medicine are scarce on the ship, so scarce that some have had no choice but to turn to crime to get what they need. Weather you were previously convicted of some crime on earth or you have turned to crime recently you are one of the many refugees who must survive by their wits. Why should the race always go to the quick, or the fight to the strong? Cheating is the gift man gives himself. Criminal characters start off with one weapon training, slight of hand or gamble.
H.) Halo Agent. During mankinds first foray into space and nascent space empire it was decided by the earth government to create a super secret agency to gather information and report back. They were stationed as officers on one of the many corporate ventures into space, or were trained specifically to go with the search expeditions trying to find a world worth colonising, these agents were tasked with maintaining links back to earth and promoting earths values. With the caraclysm many agents are desperatly trying to contact other agents and establish a command structure and determine where is best to set up a new colony for humanity to call home. These people are highly trained in engineering, weapons, survival and information gathering. It is usually not even known to the captain, if an agent from Halo is aboard. Or even more than one as agents can come in pairs.
no mans sky ttrpg
Bump because why the fuck not?
Some encounters I came up with:
>Damaged Satellite
>Solar-Sailing Organism (Docile/Hostile)
>Electromagnetic Storm
>Asteroid Field
>Cloud of Matter (Liquid Water/Liquid Nitrogen/Plasma/Radioactive Dust)
What are some other things I could include?
That's pretty tame so far. If you go for soft sci-fi the amount of source for encouter, from series, books and movies, is pretty much limitless.
What about a setting with FTL capabilities and a false vacuum collapse? All they can do is run.
>Abandoned fighter squadron. Some of the fighters may or may not be salvageable, usable, in perfect condition, or superior to your own.
>Debris field. Analysing it reveals it's made of space ship parts. It's literally an abandoned junkyard, and any repairs and upgrades cost much less.
>Minuscule debris field. Analysing it reveals it's made out of body parts of various sentient species.
>Solar sail-powered probe launched long ago by an alien species, that may or may not live still, depending on what you decide. It carries a data storage device that contains a greeting in various tongues, music, a recording of some aliens standing, posing for the camera, doing friendly gestures, and telling the discoverer that they wish them the best.
>A flotilla of tourists and yachts. They'll take photos if you go near them, and doing some fancy manoeuvres will make your reputation rise (and make them adore you).
>A giant middle finger made of stone, with an inscription (in english) saying that it was built two centuries ago by US, GLORIOUS PSYCHIC PRECURSORS, because they foresaw your arrival thanks to their SUPERIOR PSYCHIC POWERS. In truth, it was built less than two hours ago by some people hiding in a nearby gas cloud, which can be easily spotted with a scanner. They noticed you and tried to make a joke.
>An ancient super-heavy anti-spacecraft artillery platform turned into a hotel, in the middle of lawless space. They are good people and very friendly, but make a wrong move, and they'll erase you from the galaxy in a few shots.
Good shit, thanks.
I've always wanted to do a campaign loosely based on the Safehold series. It's all fantasy until you realize you're actually on a prison planet forgotten in time by the original civilization and have to go out to exact revenge on them for lying to you.
I was inspired by the recent Metroid thread, so it would be pretty soft. There's a certain aesthetic to adhere to, though.
My dream space-prison setting is The Great Ship from eponymous book. I might do this someday, living on the surface of it and trying to make a living while attempting to unlock its entrance.
haven't heard of it but i like the idea of. you think you're in a fantasy setting until you realize SPACE